Islamic Art

The Journey to Mastery: Farzana Razzaque

Conversations with master calligrapher and trained illumination artist Farzana Razzaque on studying the Islamic Fine Arts, and what it takes to become a master

Ijazah | Image courtesy of Farzana Razzaque

I chased Farzana Razzaque for almost six months to get this interview, finally pinning her down at one o’clock in the morning, just after she returned from travels and landed in California for a course she was giving the next day. The conversation was every bit worth the wait, as we discussed her journey to study the Islamic Fine Arts, and what it took to receive her ijazah.

So good to finally sit down and talk to you Farzana! First off, when did you start becoming interested in the Islamic arts?

My earliest memory would be when I started reading the Qur’an. As a child of parents from the Subcontinent, we were encouraged to start learning the short verses of the Qur’an to be used in prayer, but when my parents would sit me down, instead of reading and memorising I would be looking at the shapes of the letters and the illumination around it.

A later memory would be from my university days when I was in architecture school when we were studying the Alhambra. My classmates would ask me about…